Tag: black comedy

As the synopsis on the Netflix sleeve informed me, the trouble with Harry is that he’s dead. That is definitely trouble, but more for the people who happen to stumble upon his body. Now, how much you enjoy this movie will be directly related to how many times you think it acceptable to bury and then dig up a body. Do you think it’s acceptable to do so as many times as needed? But how many times could you possibly need to do such a thing? Do you think burying a body just once is too many times? For that mater, how do you feel about death? On a scale from one to ten in fucks given, are you at a no fucks or entirely too many? If you give entirely too many, stay away from this Hitchcock outlier.

The Trouble With Harry is a very strange film. I am a huge fan of black comedies, and for this reason I greatly enjoyed Hitchcock’s entry into the genre, but it wasn’t a box office success, and I can understand why. It doesn’t surprise me that Hitchcock would make a film like this. I’m actually surprised he didn’t make more. It has his signature quirky sensibility and wry humor that all his films possess, but in Harry it’s the focus. His signature camera angles are still there, and it feels very much like some of his early work from the ’20s and ’30s, approaching the film very much like play. This was right before Hitchcock hit what I consider to be his golden age with films like Vertigo and North by Northwest, films everyone associates most strongly with his style. Harry feels very much like a bridge between his old work and this new era, much like Dial M for Murder which was released the year before.